Polanski's bizarre black humor at odds with sunlit location shooting in the north of England only adds to the clever perversity of Cul-de-Sac. Donald Pleasence leads a crew of offbeat characters as the bisexual owner of a Northumbrian castle, where he and his wife (Francoise Dorleac) are held prisoner by a pair of gangsters on the run (Lionel Stander and Jack McGowran). Pleasence plays his role for all it is worth and then some, and his comic intensity is matched by the exquisite boredom evoked by Dorleac and the colorful absurdity of the two thugs. Cul-de-Sac won the Critics Award at the Venice Festival and was named Best Film at Berlin in 1966.